The argument on the Red Line was in progress when Sheila Evans stepped into the train car.
It was evening rush hour on Wednesday. The way Evans describes it, three people were involved in an altercation at one end of the train car. Evans tried to report the situation via the CTA website, and another passenger pushed the operator call button.
One of the individuals involved in the argument came over wielding what looked to Evans like a knife, or possibly a fake knife. The woman asked if the passengers pushed the call button, Evans said.
“Do you want to get your a– popped?” the woman asked, a video recorded by Evans shows. She warned them not to push the button, “before I have somebody kill your a– when you get upstairs.”
Evans, 27, said the passengers heard no response from the operator through the intercom for several minutes, until the people involved in the altercation had already left the train at a Near North Side station, though she said it might have been helpful that the operator stayed silent. A police officer also stepped into the train car after they left, Evans said.
“It was alarming,” she said. “And it was weird to not know what to do or how to respond.”
The altercation comes as CTA leadership has grappled in recent months with the best way to address stubbornly high rates of violent crime. Though the incident was not immediately reported by police as a major crime, it offers a window into the transit agency’s response to uncertain and sometimes scary situations for passengers. And to Evans, it raised questions about what measures could be most effective to ensure safety on trains.
CTA crime, the perception of crime and security have been nagging concerns in recent years. The rate of reported violent crime on trains spiked as the pandemic emptied the CTA of many riders, and though it has since gone down, through the first half of this year it remained higher than prepandemic levels.
There were about 5.1 violent crimes per million rides through June 2024, comparable to the same timeframe in 2023 but well above the years before the pandemic. For example, in the first half of 2019, 2.5 violent crimes were reported per million rides, a September Tribune analysis of CTA ridership and city crime data showed.
The analysis did not include every fight or argument on a train, but rather included only crimes considered serious enough to report to the FBI as “index” crimes. Violent crimes include robberies, homicides and more aggressive assaults and batteries.
Security on the CTA is handled partly by Chicago police, who patrol the transit system at no cost to the CTA. The agency also pays for additional volunteer off-duty officers, unarmed guards and dog teams.
The transit agency has boosted funding for security significantly since 2022. After proposing security spending for 2025 that was comparable to expected 2024 spending — $88.5 million for 2025 — the CTA recently decided to move $3.3 million instead to develop unspecified public safety pilot programs.
The $3.3 million is coming from existing CTA plans to cut the number of unarmed guards and increase the number of dog teams next year, CTA spokesman Manny Gonzales has previously said. He said no updates would be available until January about how many guards and dog teams will patrol the system next year.
The announcement that the money would be reshuffled came as security became a flashpoint for CTA board members in recent months. They have called for a broader range of efforts to address safety, like adding transit ambassadors, improving the environment through measures including lighting, and other efforts. They also pushed for more transparency from CTA leadership about security efforts, and more information about whether the unarmed guards were effective.
Some at the CTA have sought to push responsibility for security efforts onto Chicago police.
“Probably one of the 800-pound elephants in the room is, we’re beholden to (the Chicago Police Department). We simply do not have enough police officers on the train,” board Chairman Lester Barclay said.
“We want what was given for the Democratic National Convention,” he added. “We want the city to basically police public transportation with that same degree of fervor and interest. We saw them riding the trains, we saw them on the platforms, our customers saw that. But when the convention was over, the show was over.”
CTA President Dorval Carter has also called on the Police Department to make the transit system a priority. This month, he acknowledged the department faces bigger citywide challenges, but said both he and the board chairman had asked the department to prioritize transit.
“We don’t have enough police officers on CTA. It’s plain and simple,” he said. “Look at the size of our system, look at the geographic coverage of our system, look at what our customers tell us that they want to see.”
Carter later said police could not solve all of the challenges the CTA faces with security and efforts such as social services outreach on trains, and suggested measures, including expanding the roles of existing rail customer service agents. But he pegged the ability to add to their roles to what is allowed in union contracts.
Still, the incident left Evans frustrated with the response, and wondering if there could be better options.
“It just feels frustrating in general that whatever action happens with these kinds of incidents always happens after the fact, it’s never during or never prevention,” she said.
Evans was on her way home from work Wednesday, riding the Red Line from the Chicago station near downtown to Belmont on the North Side when she entered the car where the altercation was taking place.
The people in the altercation left the station, and CTA said police officers were already at the Clark and Division station as part of a train-checking mission Wednesday afternoon. Within 10 seconds, two women can be seen on security camera footage exiting a train car, passengers alert nearby officers to what was taking place, and the officers follow in the direction of the women, CTA said.
“Combating crime on our system requires a multi-pronged approach, the foundation of which is the Chicago Police Department, which is responsible for law enforcement for most of our system,” CTA officials said in a statement. “CTA supplements their efforts through investments in technologies, as well as added resources such as unarmed security guard and K-9 security teams, which are primarily deployed across the rail system in stations and on trains to serve as an added presence and layer of eyes/ears for reporting matters to police/first responders.”
Evans said she was happy to have an option to use the operator call button and report the situation online, through CTA’s chatbot feature unveiled earlier this year, because she felt like they were good options to avoid escalating the situation. But she said she has rarely seen a response to any situation she reported online, and wondered how the messages are monitored.
The CTA says the chatbot is not intended for emergency situations, but can be used for issues such as cleanliness, employee feedback, disruptive behavior and safety and security.
The agency said riders who feel unsafe can call 911, or if they cannot do so leave the railcar at the next stop or flag down a CTA employee for help. On trains, they can use intercom units to call the train operator, switch cars at the next stop or flag down the train operator for help.
The knife-wielding person left Evans uncertain how to feel. She played Tetris on the way back home, because she heard it was supposed to help lessen the effects of traumatic situations, then wondered just how serious the situation she’d experienced really was.
“It did feel scary at the time, but it almost felt more scary afterward looking at the video,” she said. “Somebody pointed a knife at me. That is bizarre, that’s a weird thing to go through.”
